#3--On the Empire Builder Train

Our Great Western Adventure
Day 2--On the Empire Builder Train

Friday, September 5, 2008

We elected to do the best we could sleeping in the regular coach seats on the train for the night. Judy thought she would suffer from claustrophobia if we tried to squeeze into a roomette. Also you pay quite a premium to reserve one. We can’t say it was a restful night’s sleep for either of us, but we managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep.

Morning dawned as the train sped along through the prairies of North Dakota. We had a half hour stop in Minot, where many of us got off the train for a short break. Somewhere around 3 a.m. we had bid farewell to Minnesota and slipped into North Dakota. For the next seven hours we traveled the width of this gateway to the West.

We thought we’d try out the breakfast in the dining car and were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food and the cost as well. After breakfast we were very fortunate to find two empty seats in the Sightseer Lounge.

After a while a spry 92 year old lady came by and settled in beside us for the afternoon. She was extremely knowledgeable, quite a traveler, and someone we enjoyed tremendously. We found out that she had moved in with her daughter in Cincinnati, so she lives only a few miles from where we live.

Before noon we looked out and saw the quaint train station at Wolf Point. We had finally made it to the Big Sky State of Montana. We could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel…no pun intended! Only another seven hours to go!

The entire trip from Chicago to East Glacier was 30 hours, which seems long, but we really enjoyed it. We were very surprised when we pulled into the train station at East Glacier, Montana, only a half hour behind schedule. We had been forewarned that all trains run late, sometimes very late. I guess we were lucky!

Glacier is located in the northwestern part of Montana. The lodges operate only three months of the year, from the time enough snow melts from the roads in June to the time it reappears around mid-September, but the park is open all year.